What's New

Resources updated between Monday, November 02, 2015 and Sunday, November 08, 2015

November 8, 2015

Border Policeman Benjamin Yaakovovich

Border Policeman Benjamin Yaakovovich, 19, who was critically wounded in a terror attack north of Hebron, has succumbed to his wounds on Sunday evening. His parents decided to donate his organs to save the lives of others.

"Staff Seargent Benjamin Yaakovovich Z"L drafted into the Border Police a year and a half ago, and is survived by his parents, brother, and two sisters," a police statment said.

The family has asked for privacy during these difficult times.

The attack, the first of its kind in days, came after a relatively quiet morning. Security forces shot and neutralized the driver of the vehicle.

The terror continued on Sunday, when six Israelis were wounded in three separate terror attacks in the West Bank within the span of a few hours.

Four pedestrians were wounded in a morning vehicular attack at the Tapuah Junction. Two people in their 20s were wounded moderately and seriously while a pregnant woman was lightly hurt. Another woman suffered light-to-moderate wounds.

The terrorist drove rapidly towards a group of Israelis standing at a hitchhiking station before running them over. Two Border Police officers permanently stationed at the junction shot at the assailant, who ran into a concrete barrier, and killed him. He was identified at Sulemain Shaheen, 22, of Ramallah.

Less than two hours later, one person was lightly wounded in a stabbing attack at the entrance to the settlement of Beitar Illit in Gush Etzion. The attacker was shot and wounded.

Less than two hours after the Beitar Illit attack, a 48-year-old man was stabbed and severely wounded in the town of Nabi Ilyas, near the settlement Alfei Menashe. The town is located near a busy road, and many Jews shop there. During initial questioning, the victim said he had stopped to shop in the town and was attacked by two terrorists while standing at a stall.

Five Israelis were wounded in a vehicular terror attack at the Tapuah junction in the Samaria region of the West Bank on Sunday morning.

Border police at the scene shot and killed the Palestinian driver.

"A short while ago, a terrorist arrived at a hitch-hiking post next to a roadblock at Tapuah [junction], accelerated his vehicle and hit a number of civilians who were standing there," Border Police said.

Magen David Adom said two men, 22, were moderately to seriously wounded. A third man, 23, was moderately wounded and a pregnant woman was lightly wounded.

The wounded were taken to Rabin Medical Center's Beilinson Campus in Petah Tikva. They are from Petah Tikiva, Nof Ayalon, Talmon and Yitzhar.

A young Israeli woman was also lightly injured by shards of glass.

A volunteer for United Hatzalah who was passing by the junction, Yaakov Selah, said he pulled his car over when he saw security forces racing to the scene of the attack so that he could help the wounded.

MDA paramedics Gil Bismuth and Avigail Mamliya said that when they arrived they found "the victims lying on the ground and fully conscious, but suffering from wounds to their extremities. The attacker's car, with the [dead] terrorist inside, was still nearby."

Angry settlers have since blocked the road by the nearby village of Hawara to protest the attack.

Samaria Region Council head Yossi Dagan said, "The terrorists are trying to push us out of the land with force." He reissued his call for the prime minister to respond to such attacks with announcements of new settlement construction.

More Jewish building is what will prevent future terror attacks, Dagan said.

Shortly before this incident, Border Police officers arrested a Palestinian man caught trying to scale a fence into Givat Hameyasdim in Ma'aleh Adumim, a spokesman for the Judea and Samaria police said.

The officers were responding to a call from a local security guard and fired into the air while arresting the man. The man, who police said is from the village of a-Ram, was not harmed in the incident.

Screen capture from security footage of a Palestinian woman pulling a knife out of her purse to stab a security guard at the entrance to Beitar Illit

A civilian security guard on Sunday shot a female Palestinian assailant who stabbed and lightly wounded him, as he stood at his post, just outside the Betar Illit settlement, which is located a short distance away from Jerusalem.

The incident was caught on the municipalities security cameras. An emergency dispatcher had noted the Palestinian woman, 22-year-old Halva Aliyan from nearby Beit Lehem, which is just across the road from the settlement. She was dressed in traditional black garb, with a scarf covering her head walking toward the gate of the city, with a population of 47,000.

The dispatcher alerted the security guard who then stopped her and asked to see her identification card.

As the guard focused on checking her card, Aliyan slowly reached into her purse and pulled out a knife. She then lunged at the guard and quickly tried to stab him.

The security guard was evacuated to Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem and the Aliyan was taken to Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem's Ein Karem.

The emergency dispatcher believes that she was had planned to head to a bus stop inside the city so that she could attack people standing there with her knife.

He added that a scuffle brought out at the scene between Palestinians from the village across the road and residents of Betar Illit, that was broken up by security forces.

In light of the attack, the municipality decided to ask the Palestinian workers in the city to head home for the day.

In the morning Border Police shot and killed a terrorist who had rammed his car into a hitch-hiking post in the Tapuach junction. Five Israelis were injured in that attack, two seriously, one moderately and two lightly.

Eliyahu crossing in the West Bank, the checkpoint to which a man who was stabbed in his vehicle by a suspected terrorist fled on Sunday, November 8.

A 48-year-old Israeli man is in serious condition after he was stabbed Sunday on Highway 55 outside the Palestinian village of Nabi Ilyas.

After the attack, the victim, a resident of the settlement of Emmanuel, managed to drive himself to the Eliyahu checkpoint, swerving between the lanes as he drove, according to the Defense Ministry's report of the attack.

Security personnel approached the vehicle and when the man opened his car door, he told security forces "I've been stabbed. I've been stabbed," before passing out. Security forces then provided emergency medical treatment to stop his bleeding.

An initial investigation of the incident found that the man had stopped to do some shopping on the road outside Nabi Ilyas. At one of the shopping stands, two terrorists stabbed him in the stomach and fled.

After driving himself to the checkpoint, the man was taken to Meir Medical Center in Kfar Saba for emergency treatment and is on a respirator.

The terrorists who committed the attack are still at large and security forces are conducting searches in the area.

This is the third separate terror attack of the day. Around 11:00 AM, a civilian security guard shot a female Palestinian assailant who stabbed and lightly wounded him, as he stood at his post, just outside the Betar Illit settlement, which is located a short distance away from Jerusalem.

Earlier, around 9 o'clock in the morning, Border Police shot and killed a terrorist who had rammed his car into a hitch-hiking post at the Tapuach junction. Five Israelis were injured in that attack, two seriously, one moderately and two lightly.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime has profited enormously from abducting tens of thousands of its own citizens, according to a new report.

The Syrian government has sponsored a campaign of "widespread and systematic enforced disappearances," said Amnesty International, a human rights group, in itsreport. As part of an "insidious black market," family members of those who have disappeared pay tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to "middlemen" linked to the Syrian regime, sometimes only to obtain false information about the whereabouts and health of their loved ones.

Another group, the Syrian Network for Human Rights, has estimated that since the start of the Syrian civil war in 2011, at least 65,000 people have been kidnapped, including 58,000 civilians.

"As well as shattering lives, disappearances are driving a black market economy of bribery which trades in the suffering of families who have lost a loved one," said Philip Luther, director of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa Program, in a statement. "They are left with mounting debts and a gaping hole where a loved one used to be."

"These are crimes against humanity, part of a carefully orchestrated campaign designed to spread terror and quash the slightest sign of dissent across the country," he added.

The regime has targeted citizens who it believes are opposed to the government, including activists, journalists, doctors, humanitarian workers, and those whose relatives are wanted by authorities. Abductees are placed in crowded detention centers, where they have died from disease, torture, or execution.

Family members work with thousands of intermediaries tied to the Syrian government, such as prison guards, lawyers, or former detainees, to find out the fate of detained relatives. The middlemen devote a portion of families' bribes to state or prison officials for information.

Payments related to abductions have become a significant part of the Syrian economy, which hasshrunk by more than half since the conflict began. One lawyer in Damascus told Amnesty that, "these bribes are a cash cow for the regime-they are a source of funding that they have come to rely on ... Even the lawyers are taking bribes now. It's a disgrace."

After spending tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to locate their loved ones, families are often unsuccessful in finding them. Khaled Durgham moved to Turkey to pay off $150,000 that he owes to various contacts as he tried to track down three brothers, who were detained in 2012 for organizing peaceful protests. Their whereabouts are still unknown.

"When your brothers have been taken, and someone says he has information about them, you will follow him, even to find out a shred of information," Khaled told Amnesty.

Families often have no choice but to work with middlemen, or face retribution from authorities. When Khalid Hamoudi traveled to Damascus in 2014 to find his son Suleiman, a Syrian soldier who was arrested after he tried to leave the army, he was arrested himself at a military checkpoint and has not been heard from since.

Amnesty interviewed dozens of family members of abductees, former detainees, and investigators for the report, which covers disappearances between March 2011 and August 2015.

Luther urged the United Nations Security Council to refer Syria to the International Criminal Court and "impose targeted sanctions, including asset freezes, to pressure the authorities to end enforced disappearances."

The Assad regime has been accused of numerous atrocities throughout the four-year civil war. Defectors have presented evidence that authorities tortured and killed at least 11,000 civilians in jail. Syrian forces have also killed hundreds of citizens in chemical weapons attacks with nerve gas andchlorine-filled bombs.

An estimated 250,000 people have been killed in the war, and more than 10 million have been displaced.

"I don't want people to love me, I want people to fear me," Assad is reported to have said in 2011.

In a statement commemorating the 20th anniversary of the assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon equated the brutal murder of Jews by Palestinian terrorists with the construction of homes for Jewish families on disputed territories. According to the November 3, 2015 statement:

"Rabin was ... murdered by an opponent of the peace process just when it was at a moment of historic breakthrough. In the years since, terrorism, expanding settlements and halting progress in implementing Israeli-Palestinian agreements have repeatedly shattered hopes."

State television said the elite Revolutionary Guards had arrested "several members of an infiltration network linked to hostile Western governments" working in the media and with social networks (AFP Photo/Anthony Wallace)(File)

Sonia Bibi, pictured, who was admitted to hospital in Pakistan last month, died from her injuries

A young woman has died after a jilted suitor set her on fire for refusing his marriage proposal.

Sonia Bibi, 20, was admitted to hospital in Pakistan last month, after her former lover doused her with petrol and set her alight after she turned down his offer of marriage.

Medical staff had originally said she would recover, but a doctor in Multan's Nishtar hospital said Miss Bibi had died on Tuesday morning after her injuries became infected.

Between 45 and 50 per cent of her body had been burned in the attack, doctor Naheed Chaudhry, the head of the hospital's burns department said.

The incident took place in a remote village of Multan district in central Punjab province. Police have arrested the 24-year-old suspect.

Miss Bibi had told police that she had fallen out of love with Ahmed, and preliminary investigations suggested he had set her on fire 'after she refused to marry him'.

Hundreds of women are murdered in Pakistan each year in cases of domestic violence or on the grounds of defending family 'honour'.

The Aurat Foundation, a campaign group that works to improve the lives of women in Pakistan's conservative and patriarchal society, says more than 3,000 women have been killed in such attacks since 2008.